Celtic studies

Celtic studies or Celtology is the academic discipline occupied with the study of any sort of cultural output relating to a Celtic people. This ranges from linguistics, literature and art history, archaeology and history, the focus lying on the study of the various Celtic languages, living and extinct.[1] The primary areas of focus are the six Celtic languages currently in use: Irish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, and Breton.

As a university subject, it is taught at a number of universities worldwide, most of them in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and France, but also in the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, Poland, Austria and the Netherlands.

Written studies of the Celts, their cultures and their languages go back to classical Greek and Latin accounts, possibly beginning with Hecataeus in the 6th century BC[1] and best known through such authors as Polybius, Posidonius, Pausanias, Diodorus Siculus, Julius Caesar and Strabo. Modern Celtic studies originated in the 16th and 17th century, when many of these classical authors were re-discovered, published and translated.[1]

Academic interest in Celtic languages grew out of comparative and historical linguistics, which was itself established at the end of the 18th century. In the 16th century, George Buchanan studied Gaelic. The first major breakthrough in Celtic linguistics came with the publication of Archaeologia Britannica (1707) by the Welsh scholar Edward Lhuyd, who was the first to recognise that Gaulish, British and Irish belong to the same language family.[1] He also published the English version of a study by Paul-Yves Pezron of Gaulish.

In 1767 James Parsons published his study The Remains of Japhet, being historical enquiries into the affinity and origins of the European languages. He compared a 1000-word lexicon of Irish and Welsh and concluded that they were originally the same, then comparing the numerals in many other languages.

The second big leap forwards was made when the Englishman Sir William Jones postulated that Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and many other languages including "the Celtic" derived from a common ancestral language. This hypothesis, published in The Sanscrit Language (1786), would later be hailed as the discovery of the Indo-European language family, from which grew the field of Indo-European studies.[1] The Celtic languages were definitively linked to the Indo-European family over the course of the 19th century.

Although Jones' trailblazing hypothesis inspired numerous linguistic studies, of which Celtic languages were a part, it was not until Johann Kaspar Zeuss's monumental Grammatica Celtica (volume 1, 1851; volume 2, 1853) that any truly significant progress was made.[1] Composed in Latin, the work draws on the earliest Old Irish, Middle Welsh and other Celtic primary sources to construct a comparative grammar, which was the first to lay out a steady basis for Celtic linguistics.[1] Among other achievements, Zeuss was able to crack the Old Irish verb.

German Celtic studies (Keltologie) is seen by many as having been established by Johann Kaspar Zeuss (1806–1856) (see above). In 1847, he was appointed as a professor of linguistics in Munich. Until the middle of the 19th century, Celtic studies progressed largely as a subfield of linguistics. Franz Bopp (1791–1867) carried out further studies in comparative linguistics to link the Celtic languages to the Proto-Indo-European language. He is credited with having finally proven Celtic to be a branch of the Indo-European language family. From 1821 to 1864, he served as a professor of oriental literature and general linguistics in Berlin.

In 1896, Kuno Meyer and Ludwig Christian Stern founded the Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie (ZCP), the first academic journal solely devoted to aspects of Celtic languages and literature and still in existence today.[2] In the second half of the century, significant contributions were made by the Orientalist Ernst Windisch (1844–1918). He held a chair in Sanskrit at the University of Leipzig, however is most remembered for his numerous publications in the field of Celtic studies. In 1901, the Orientalist and Celtologist Heinrich Zimmer (1851–1910) was made professor of Celtic languages at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, the first position of its kind in Germany. He was followed in 1911 by Kuno Meyer (1858–1919), who, in addition to numerous publications in the field, was active in the Irish independence movement.

Perhaps the most important German-speaking Celticist is the Swiss scholar Rudolf Thurneysen (1857–1940). A student of Windisch and Zimmer, Thurneysen was appointed to the chair of comparative linguistics at the University of Freiburg in 1887; he succeeded to the equivalent chair at the University of Bonn in 1913. His notability arises from his work on Old Irish. For his masterwork, Handbuch des Altirischen (1909, meaning "Handbook of Old Irish"), translated into English as A Grammar of Old Irish, he located and analysed a multitude of Old Irish manuscripts. His work is considered as the basis for all succeeding studies of Old Irish.

In 1920, Julius Pokorny (1887–1970) was appointed to the chair of Celtic languages at Friedrich Wilhelm University, Berlin. Despite his support for German nationalism and Catholic faith, he was forced out of his position by the Nazis on account of his Jewish ancestry. He subsequently emigrated to Switzerland and returned to Germany again in 1955 to teach at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. In Berlin, he was succeeded in 1937 by Ludwig Mühlhausen, a devout Nazi.

After World War II, German Celtic studies took place predominantly in West Germany and Austria. Studies in the field continued at Freiburg, Bonn, Marburg, Hamburg as well as Innsbruck, however an independent professorship for Celtic studies has not yet been arranged anywhere. In this period, Hans Hartmann, Heinrich Wagner and Wolfgang Meid made notable contributions to the scientific understanding of the boundaries of the Celtic language area and the location of the homeland of the Celtic peoples. In East Germany, the Berlin chair in Celtic languages has not been occupied since 1966.

The only Chair of Celtic studies in Continental Europe is at Utrecht University (the Netherlands).[9] It was established in 1923, when Celtic studies were added to the Chair of Germanic studies on the special request of its new professor A. G. van Hamel.[10]

Celtic studies are taught in universities in England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Ireland (see below). These studies cover language, history, archaeology and art. In addition Celtic languages are taught in schools in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall and the Isle of Man in addition to extramural courses in each Celtic language.

Scholars at the XIV International Congress of Celtic Studies, Maynooth 2011

A notable research project is the Celtic Inscribed Stones Project (CISP), which has made details of the many inscriptions in Britain available online. Work has also been carried out on the Celtic influence on the English language and on the Celtic elements in the place names of England. Books and publications on aspects of Celtic studies are numerous, a notable one being that of Kenneth H. Jackson on Language and History in Early Britain. This included chapters on all the types of Insular Celtic, including Pictish. Several journals on Celtic studies are published including Celtica and Studia Celtica.

The University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies runs the Ancient Britain and the Atlantic Zone Project,[11] whose Senior Fellow and Project Leader is Professor John T. Koch,[12] where research is conducted. Professor Koch gave the O'Donnell Lecture in 2008 at Aberystwyth University titled "People called Keltoi, the La Tène Style, and ancient Celtic languages: the threefold Celts in the light of geography".[13][13][14]

The last International Congress of Celtic Studies (XIV) was held at the University of Maynooth, in August 2011.

France produced the first academic journal devoted to Celtic studies, Revue Celtique. Revue Celtique was first published in 1870 in Paris and continued until the death of its last editor, Joseph Loth, in 1934. After that point it was continued under the name Études Celtiques. In 2007, 2.8% of children in Brittany were enrolled in bilingual primary schools and the number of children enrolled in these schools is steadily growing.[27]

Huther, Andreas. "'In Politik verschieden, in Freundschaft wie immer': The German Celtic scholar Kuno Meyer and the First World War." In The First World War as a clash of cultures, ed. Fred Bridgham. Columbia (SC): Camden House, 2006. pp. 231–44. ISBN 1-57113-340-2.

Koch, John T. "Celtic Studies." In A century of British medieval studies, ed. Alan Deyermond. British Academy centenary monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. pp. 235–61. ISBN 978-0-19-726395-2. RHS record

Mac Mathúna, Séamus. "The History of Celtic Studies in Russia and the Soviet Union." In Parallels between Celtic and Slavic. Proceedings of the First International Colloquium of Societas Celto-Slavica held at Coleraine 19–21 June 2005, ed. Séamus Mac Mathúna and Maxim Fomin. Studia Celto-Slavica 1. Coleraine, 2006.